Soft Machine³ - Arts Tech and Other

Wisperweb - New blog about new GXT site (Peter Fisk)

I have started a new Blog discussing a new Website that will be deployed in April. The site uses GXT for the user interface, Google’s Application Engine for the server and Scheme running in the browser as it’s scripting language. The blog will describe the development and deployment of the site.

GXT/Lisp/AppEngine - A Google Trifecta

Google has some smart people. When GAE (Google Application Engine) was first announced, I had my doubts. The Python language and a “Big Table” database? At first, I thought that they were joking … but a year of using them have made me a believer. but…. The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is based on writing code in Java and then compiling to Javascipt. It seemed so cumbersome that I tried every Ajax library that I could find before attempting to use GWT. There was a nagging problem with Base64 encoding that I had been attempting to fix for a month and when I stepped through my Java code in the Eclipse debugger the cause became obvious - an uninitialized variable. And I became a believer for a second time. but…. So, the kids a Google know Python and Java and Javascript - but Lisp was surely before their time. For years, I have been trying out various Lisp/Scheme interpreters and my favorite one has always been SILK (Scheme in 50K) by Peter Norvig. Out of curiosity a few weeks ago, I googled (what else?) “Peter Norvig”. It turns out that he is head of research at Google!